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Cultural participation in Europe: Can we identify common determinants?

Journal of Cultural Economics volume 40, pages 127–162 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which demographic and socioeconomic characteristics influence the decision to visit and the number of visits to museums, art galleries, historical monuments, and archaeological sites. Using ordered probit models based on data for 350,000 adults in 24 EU countries, we find that the likelihood and number of such visits depend mainly on per capita household income, education, labor market status, and country of birth. Attained characteristics such as education and income have remarkably similar positive effects on cultural participation across the countries in our sample, while the effects of age and gender are both weaker and less consistent across countries. We conclude that cultural distinctions along the lines of socioeconomic attainment are stable even in very different country contexts with varying cultural policies and economic conditions. We discuss the way these results inform three research topics: identification of the characteristics of visitors to museums and historical sites in order to attract new audiences; the effect of public spending on culture on accessibility to cultural sites; and cross-national variation in cultural stratification.

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Notes

  1. Note that Eurobarometer 2007 also contains a cultural module. Its sample size, however, is much smaller than that of the Survey of Income and Living Conditions.

  2. EU-10 includes the following countries: Cyprus (CY), the Czech Republic (CZ), Estonia (EE), Hungary (HU), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Malta (MT), Poland (PL), Slovenia (SI), and Slovakia (SK).

  3. The occupational classification is not available for unemployed individuals.

  4. ISCED is the International Standard Classification of Education.

  5. All of the variables except income are dummy variables.

  6. The coefficients of urbanization are not reported due to space limitations.

  7. The zero-inflated ordered probit model with correlated errors is estimated by the ZIOPC code (see http://myweb.fsu.edu/dwh06c).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), Arsenal Objekt 20, 1030, Vienna, Austria

    Martin Falk

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Tally Katz-Gerro

Authors
  1. Martin Falk
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  2. Tally Katz-Gerro
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Correspondence to Tally Katz-Gerro.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

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Falk, M., Katz-Gerro, T. Cultural participation in Europe: Can we identify common determinants?. J Cult Econ 40, 127–162 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-015-9242-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-015-9242-9

Keywords

  • Cultural participation
  • Cross-National comparison
  • Cultural policy
  • Europe